Heading machines are machines used for drilling straight underground roadways, and are divided into open heading machines and shield heading machines. A heading machine usually includes a traveling mechanism, a working mechanism, a loading and transporting mechanism and a transfer mechanism. With advancing of the traveling mechanism, a cutting head in the working mechanism continually crushes rock, and the crushed rock is carried away, so the heading machine has the advantages of high safety, high efficiency, good roadway forming quality and the like. Particularly, a cantilever type heading machine integrates the functions of cutting, loading and transporting, traveling, operation and the like, and is mainly used for cutting underground rock, coal or half coal rock roadways having cross sections in any shapes.
Drilling and blasting rock-breaking heading will still be a main method for tunneling of whole hard rock roadways within a very long period of time in China at present, heavy cantilever type heading machines used for heading of large-section rock roadways are under test in China, and whole rock roadway heavy cantilever type heading machines which are high in cutting power, high in cutting efficiency and stable in operation and have good dedusting systems will represent the development direction of a rock roadway heading technology in the future. The cantilever type heading machines have been greatly developed in whole rock roadways and half coal rock roadways having relatively low rock hardness f<10, and combined operating lines (also referred to as coal roadway comprehensive mechanized heading) of the cantilever type heading machines and single anchor rod drillers have gradually become a major means among efficient coal roadway heading means in China. However, the hardness of rock strata is usually an indefinite value, i.e., the rock hardness in different areas is not necessarily same, and the working condition is quite severe; when the rock hardness f is greater than 10, the cantilever type heading machine is extremely low in efficiency and its energy consumption is increased, and cutting teeth drop seriously and even cannot implement heading; the heading machine is usually retracted to a safe distance, and then drilling and blasting rock breaking and heading are implemented, so that the heading efficiency is relatively low, and the blasting operation has great safety hazard; therefore, high-hardness rock roadway heading has become a bottleneck of mechanized development of the heading machines in China.